I had a satirical piece on how to get rich quick up here a few months ago. I found that most of the readers enjoyed the article. Well something really funny happened recently in regards to the topic of getting rich quick. The other day I received an email from an affiliate manager for one of these scams. Yes- really! After exchanging a few emails I was completely shocked. Imagine me being an affiliate of a how to get rich quick scheme? I would get upset by the email normally, but I honestly found it more humorous than anything.
So let’s talk about how to get rich quick… Again! This time I wanted to take a different stance on the make money fast topic. Let’s look at how can you tell if it’s a get rich quick scam:
There’s no freakin’ details.
Okay I can make lots of money fast. Show some examples. Cool. When are you going to tell me how to make the money? Where are the details? How will I get paid? Who will pay me these thousands of dollars? These long page ads and affiliate emails literally have no details about how you will actually make money. They simply inundate you with dreams and hopes of making a fortune with minimal effort. If you ever get a email that discusses making money, with absolutely no details, be careful because it’s more than likely a big fat scam.
The phrase “get rich quick” is used.
If I worked for a “get rich quick” company I would definitely NOT use that same term over and over again. I know that it’s a catchy attention grabber, but can they not think of something more clever or less scammy? That phrase is an instant giveaway that it’s a scam. Some times I’ll read the long page ad just to see what kind of clever marketing strategy they’re trying to use this time. But I will never ever send them $50 for entry into their program that could make me “thousands in days.”
It’s easy to apply.
Really? How easy can it be? You can easily get rich quick by winning the lottery, but how easy is it? I would like to think that if I were to make lots of money that it’s due to something I did right. Not some really easy way that thousands of other supposed people have used to make money fast. As soon as I see the words “get rich quick” together, I get very tempted to just close the window. I don’t want some program that’s easy to apply to and dying to let people in. Why would anyone want to share those kind of secrets with complete strangers on the internet?
If you really want to follow down this path then you should check out some of the consequences of making money fast. If you perhaps are simply interested in finding legitimate work from home jobs, you should check out my guest post at The Digerati Life.
{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
Lots of get rich quick schemes infiltrate the internet. I always approach an opportunity with a “guilty unless proven innocent” stance. Thanks for the reminder! I’ve been fooled more than a few times but have become wiser each time.
We’ve all been fooled in a sense. Thankfully only a few of us have actually gone as far as to fill their pockets with our hard earned cash.
I usually send back a response…either funny or angry depending on my mood. I sometimes ask for their info so I can look into the matter fully. I don’t know, maybe I’m crazy, but I don’t get nearly as many of these things as my husband does. Plus it makes me feel better to vent or joke around.
Yea it’s definitely one of those things that you need to learn how to laugh off.
I’ll share a little secret: my new contact page shows what pages the person viewed on my site. I find it completely hysterical when someone emails me telling me that they love my blog. Then it clearly shows that the person found me on a search engine, went to contact page, and sent email. Ooops!
I haven’t had this happen yet, but I’ll check with Google Analytics if it does. That would be funny!
I actually don’t pay as much attention to these anymore, so it’s hard to say whether I get a lot, more, less, or not many of them… but I know exactly how they look. And I’d warn genuine entrepreneurs to go out of their way to make their own launch/order pages NOT LOOK AT ALL like some of these scammy sites.